20th Century Fox Heads to Asimov’s The Caves of Steel

20th Century Fox is planning to adapt another Isaac Asimov novel. Deadline reports that Henry Hobson will direct The Caves of Steel with a script from John Scott 3.

Published in 1954, the book tells a sci-fi detective story set roughly 3,000 years in the future. In it, a police detective, Elijah Bailey, joins forces with a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve a murder case of a “Spacer” Ambassador before it becomes an intergalactic incident. In the world of the book, Spacers are those who have chosen to leave the Earth for colonies on new worlds, creating a rift between those who remain on the overpopulated Earth.

Bailey and Olivaw (or elements thereof) reappear in subsequent Asimov stories, including The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire.

The Caves of Steel was previously adapted as a British telefilm in 1964 and some have criticized Fox’s previous Asimov-based hit, I, Robot for borrowing the basic setup, as the human detective/robot pairing was not a story told in the original 1950 I, Robot anthology.

Hobson and Scott, as announced earlier this year, are working on their first theatrical project, Maggie, about a teenage girl’s gradual transformation into a zombie.